Embarassingly basic question about W3V second batteries

Hi folks,

I'm getting a W3V any day now (with that great rebate I could no longer wallow in indecision!) and am thinking about how to maximize my unplugged work/play time with a second battery.

My embarassingly basic question is this: is it reasonable to expect everything on my W3V to work smoothly if I use a main battery until it's about drained, save work, shut down, disconnect the drained battery, connect a second main (8-cell) battery (obviously all charged up from the night before or whatever) and restart?

And is there any way to charge a main battery other than leaving it connected to a plugged-in W3V?

My thought was that using a second 8-cell ought to get me more overall time than using the 6-cell modular-bay battery.

But I didn't know if having no power whatsoever (during the switchover) would possibly do bad things to the heated-up system--or, more importantly, whether I'd be likely to get a chance (that is, enough warning and remaining power) to save my work and execute a proper shutdown before the first main battery drained completely.

To anticipate what I think some of you might say about why I don't just go with the modular battery which is, after all, designed to do the failover smoothly: the time I can imagine being most frustrated with battery life is on long plane trips when I've done all the work I care to do and am watching a DVD...which means I couldn't have a modular battery installed without having to drag along some kind of cumbersome external optical device. I don't have any software for putting movies on the hard drive ahead of time, and I need that space for my work, anyway. I can see myself being willing to stop a movie, shut down, change the battery and restart, however.

And to ease your minds overall: I've already searched the archives and researched a bit how to underclock and undervolt the machine so as to get the most possible power from the first main battery...so what I'm asking for here is some real-world commentary on how a theoretical main-to-main battery switchover would work as compared to the main-to-modular switchover. Which second battery, in the final estimation, seems the better/safer solution for lengthening the amount of time the W3V can spend unplugged?

Thanks in advance to any of you who are willing to share your expertise on the W3V...and apologies for having to ask such newbish questions!

 

I can not think of any reason why that wouldn't be just fine, if a little annoying to stop and have to fast forward through a movie. I've got an older dell that I swap batteries out of all the time.. the computer never knows the difference..

I know for some batteries there are external chargers, but can't recall where I saw them..

Also, sometimes its a good idea to check the secondary market (ebay) and see if there are any aftermarket batteries available that are better than the ones the OEM offers. BUT do your homework because bad, cheap batteries have a way of.. well.. exploding and causing horrible burns and such.. That said, I have a couple of aftermarket batteries for my old beast of a dell PIII and I get over 9 hours of work time out of it and its been going for two years now..

 

Nope it'll be fine, as long as you either hibernate, it saves everything, then switch batteries, you'll be fine

 

thanks for the responses! I'll check into those secondary-market batteries as an option, but I'm glad to hear that I shouldn't be endangering my new, expensive toy with a complete swap of main batteries.

 

HappyCamper - you do realize that pretty much any laptop comes with the battery disconnected from the moment it leaves the assembly line, and it boots right up when you turn it on, right? There's nothing to worry about in regards to how long the laptop can remain completely w/o power.

As for the switchover, depending on your power management configurations, the laptop will ususally go into hibernate once the battery reaches a certain point (ie, ~5%). This is usually configured so that there's enough juice to complete the process. When you provide power again, via A/C, D/C, or a fresh battery, the laptop should boot and come out of hibernation. Everything should be exactly as it was (open programs, etc...) before the shutdown (though I'm not sure that the DVD will be in the same spot).

 

Thanks, Lee--what you say makes sense. I thought that's how things would work, but before I got all power-mad with my new toy (ha ha) I thought I should ask some folks with experience, just to be sure there wouldn't be a weird heat-with-restart or some similarly fuzzy and unknown issue to trip me up with my choice of a 2nd main battery instead of the modular one.
HC